


Intent

by LadyHallen



Series: Tumblr HP [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, magical healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 08:10:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8048824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHallen/pseuds/LadyHallen
Summary: Magic was really all about intent.





	Intent

When Harry Potter was eight years old and the occasional Dudley playground victim because she swung higher on the swing than him, or had people actually willing to push her on the merry-go-round, she discovered that she could make injuries go away until she could deal with them properly.

It was all about intent, she thinks on it later when someone asks her. It’s all about asking properly, like setting a dentist’s appointment. Except, the wound didn’t really like staying away and was really insistent about getting their appointment. She clocked her maximum for two weeks, before she passed out with a headache.

It was a useful skill to have, especially when she was slicing chicken and didn’t need to deal with her blood getting in the chicken too on top of an Aunt Petunia that watched her like a hawk. She didn’t really think it was anything abnormal, per se. She just found it weird that other people didn’t know how to ask properly.

Hermione, once she heard about the comparison, looked bemused.

“Harry,” she said after seeing a knife-wound vanish and hearing the subsequent explanation. “Most people don’t really want to go to dentists. Like, the number of people that are punctual about their appointments are very rare.”

Hermione ought to know, being the daughter of a dentist couple.

“I think you mean Wedding Planners,” Hermione eventually conceded. “Mum always says that her sister got the short-end of the stick in getting careers because brides were nightmares that demanded the impossible.”

Harry blinked at that and gave her a point. “Okay, so the wounds are brides.”

(Strangely, McGonagall, after hearing this comparison, guffawed.)

Quidditch-related injuries were more difficult to go away however. They were larger, for one, and had more complications. Concussions, she realized after one experiment gone wrong, were impossible to give a reschedule. Broken bones took more concentration. Blood loss was something she couldn’t ask since her body seemingly didn’t classify it as injury, more of an anomaly.

So she settled for injuries that broke skin.

Once she’d mastered that, she realized that she could, in fact, transfer injuries of other people on herself. Again, it was a matter of asking.

This was about the time that Ginny got dragged into it, because Hermione felt that she needed more people on her side. Harry had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

“Just,” Hermione struggled. “It’s like this; you don’t like seeing me hurt. If you flip that, I don’t like seeing you hurt. Can you please…stop helping people?”

Ginny nodded earnestly, though she looked a little bewildered why she nodded.

“Angelina had a sprain,” Harry points out. “She had to go home for Christmas, her parents would have worried. So I helped out.”

This somehow caused Hermione to worry even more.

“The little things,” Hermione stated slowly. “Are how this thing starts. And the next time someone gets a broken bone, you’re going to do it too. No, Harry. You are not swaying me from this.”

Ginny finally spoke up. “It’s like you don’t like yourself,” she added. “Because why do you hurt yourself? I mean, helping is nice and all, but you should have limits. Mum always said so.”

Harry was finally swayed. Ginny and Hermione exchange looks that speak of complete determination.

(That year, she gets a nice care basket from Mrs. Weasley and a Weasley Jumper.)

When Professor Lupin comes along in Third Year, Harry was proficient enough in sensing injuries from other people that she felt ill whenever he was in the vicinity.

“What’s wrong? He’s the most competent DADA teacher we’ve ever had,” Hermione said looking a bit concerned.

For the first time, Harry struggled to describe it. “He’s like…he feels like two people. Not like Professor Quirrel. Professor Quirrel didn’t feel sick, he just felt _wrong._ Lupin feels….he feels like two people fighting in one body and he’s so _tired_ because it’s just him against himself. Does that make sense?”

Hermione hummed and noted this down in her notebook. Meanwhile, Harry struggled not to strangle somebody or bash her head in just to get rid of the feeling.

Ginny, thankfully, brought around Luna Lovegood and Harry _loved_ her.

“I love your hair,” Harry said, looking at the messy locks that tumbled this way and that. “And your earrings have personality.”

Luna fixed the protuberant silvery eyes at her and smiled. “Your magic feels friendly.”

They shared a smile, getting that strange certainty that both of them would be friends for life.

However, not even Luna is enough to distract Harry from Professor Lupin’s condition. It distracted Harry in crucial times and she gets enough disappointed looks to last a lifetime.

It’s around this time that the Hogsmeade visits start and Harry wanted to cry. It wasn’t unfair, because fair was just a word and not something that didn’t happen in real life. No, she just wanted Lupin to go away, or maybe deal with the other person inside him because his growls were distracting her.

After Harry inadvertently let that slip, Hermione said, “Aha!” and left for the library.

And then Sirius Black and the Fiasco of the Whomping Willow happened. She didn’t even _like_ Ron Weasley, the prat. He was sometimes nice, being all brotherly, but that was just during Christmas, when all his friends were away and he somehow had to make nice with the girls. The rest of the year, he was a grade-A asshole.

“He’s a werewolf,” Hermione announced, looking ill and tired and bordering on hysteria.

Harry could feel how _ill_ both Lupin and Black were and she wanted to hurl. How strong their will must be, because if she felt _that_ , she knows she couldn’t have the strength to get up from bed at all.

She was not special, no. She just feels things differently like how Luna sees things differently.

(She was suddenly so profoundly grateful for Luna, Ginny and Hermione and she doesn’t know why.)

Fourth Year was when Harry suddenly has a word for it when she is facing a Nesting Mother Dragon and too far terrified that she’s actually calm.

Aura sensing, Dumbledore had mentioned in passing, though he’d looked dubious. Harry was plenty dubious too, because Aura sensing was meant to just feel emotions, not feel the pain, and know how to ask to shift it, to move it back. Rescheduling.

She stuck to what she knows best. Really, everything was all about politeness. Politely asking the injury so she could have time to deal with other things. Like the fire-breathing dragon trying to roast her to Avalon eternal.

Madam Pomfrey was completely non-plussed when she had no injuries to speak of, but Harry knows she has them. She could feel them at the back of her mind, like the constant ring of an unanswered telephone.

Hermione had burst into tears at the sight of the lacerations at her back, when the _appointment_ had finally arrived.

“At this rate,” Ginny remarked with her usual morbid humor. “I’m going to be better than Snape in brewing Dittany.”

Harry pointedly gestured at the roll of bandages and cream. “I did have this stocked you know,” she said loudly over Hermione’s sniffling.

“What you have right now is too deep for the cream,” Ginny argued. “Stop feeling noble.”

Harry wasn’t feeling noble. She was feeling practical.

Most things Harry did in life was to be practical. Politeness got things done faster, so she did it and learned, hey, so I can change when I have to deal with bleeding wounds.

Like how Harry was being practical when she asked Luna out to the Yule Ball.

“Me?” she clarified. “I have a sunflower yellow gown. Just so you know.”

Harry had deep blue, and it wasn’t a problem.

It wasn’t a problem, though McGonagall did look a bit teary-eyed when both of them had waltzed through.

It wasn’t a problem, even if most of the pureblood men glared hostility at Luna whenever the younger girl pranced to her side in her usual floaty manner.

Things were lovely, until that bloody portkey and she could _feel_ the rush of The Void heading towards Cedric Diggory. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe, as the sickly green jet of light struck the kind boy and he was sucked into The Void.

 _So that’s how the Killing Curse worked,_ she mused dazedly as she was tied to the tombstone. _It’s not an injury. Death doesn’t hurt. It’s not something that is supposed to hurt. That was simply…disconnection._

Harry chewed on that even more, even as she glared the injury Pettigrew carved into for four days away.

She knows she can’t push The Void into a reschedule. She also knows she can’t avoid getting killed.

But, something that Hermione had talked her into trying niggled at her.

 _Sharing_ the bookworm had called it. Sharing the pain, so that Harry didn’t have to suffer alone. Because all three of her friends were awesome women and didn’t like watching her bleed.

So when Voldemort had untied her, Harry didn’t dodge the jet of green light, the rushing, yawning emptiness that beckoned. She opened her arms wide and _shared._

And it was difficult, completely difficult, because this was supposed to be theory only. Something to try on a rainy day. In a way, it was also easier, because The Void _wanted_ to be shared. It wanted to touch people. Everyone already had a touch of The Void in them and Harry just…encouraged it.

She drifted, a bit confused and Luna was there for a moment, looking the most serious she had ever seen.

“You ought to make a choice you know,” the blonde said solemnly. “It’s not healthy for a body, for you to wander around like this.”

Somehow, and she didn’t know how, Harry understood that she needed to decide between going and staying. The Void beckoned, really and the appeal was there.

She wasn’t tired, per se. But she was really curious about her parents. She wanted a moment to talk to them.

Luna gave her that small, secretive smile though and Harry decided she had to see more of it.

And she inhaled a couple more breaths and _asked._

(x)

Later, when Harry was asked about the Graveyard, all she would say was, “I had an epiphany.”

 _Healing_ , Harry mused in the privacy of her room. _Was absolutely terrifying_.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this post in tumblr, talking about how really freaking creepy magical healing was. And I just...agree with it. So much and completely. So this was inspired by that post.
> 
> I'm also available at [tumblr](http://ladyhallen.tumblr.com) for any worldbuilding questions and prompts.


End file.
